Why is this place significant?

Why is this place Category 1 / Category 2?

Early history The site overlooks the Manukau Harbour, on a peninsula to the east of Waikūmete (Little Muddy Bay). The peninsula formed part of an extensive forest, which according to Te Kawerau ā Maki traditions was initially occupied by Patupaiarehe or fairy people. Subsequent arrivals included the tohunga of the Tainui waka, Rakataura - also known as Hape - who named many places adjoining the Manukau. From the 1600s, the area’s occupants included Te Kawerau ā Maki, the northernmost grouping of the Tainui confederation. Te Kawerau accounts attest to extensive use of the Manukau coastline, including lands immediately to the east of the Waikūmete inlet: ‘The coastal area extending west from Motukaraka [beside the Whau canoe portage] to Waikūmete (Little Muddy Creek) is known collectively as Tītirangi, having been named by Rakataura in commemoration of a hill in the Pacific homeland. Along these shores are places of historical importance to Te Kawerau ā Maki including: Te Kai ō Poutūkeka, Ōtītore, Ōkewa, Paturoa, and Taumatarearea (the headland overlooking the entrance of Waikūmete). The latter inlet was strategically important as it was located at the southern end of a major inland walk way that ran north-south, and also as the embarkation point for canoe travel on the Manukau Harbour. The importance of Waikūmete and its catchment as a canoe building area, until the 1860s, is reflected in the place names Te-Tō-o-Parahiku, “the dragging place of the semi-finished canoe hulls”, and Maramara Tōtara, “the chips of totara wood”.’ Numerous identified midden sites along the peninsula coastline indicate the use of marine resources. Occupation at the southern end of the peninsula, some 300 m from the current Shadbolt House, is also attested by an archaeologically recorded bank and ditch. During the eighteenth century, conflict between neighbouring iwi to the north and south, Ngāti Whātua ō Kaipara and Te Waiōhua, resulted in battles at nearby Paruroa (Big Muddy Creek) and Paturoa (Tītirangi Creek) - at which Ngāti Whātua prevailed. Te Kawerau and other groups continued to occupy the area, but pressure to fell the forest for kauri and other timber increasingly led to tracts passing into European hands from the late 1830s onwards. In 1854, the land on which the future Shadbolt House was erected was acquired as part of a 190-acre holding of ‘Forest Land’ by Major Joseph Greenwood, a former British soldier in India and Afghanistan who had recently been elected to New Zealand’s first parliament. During the 1850s, both Māori and European sawyers worked in the vicinity. After extensive logging, a 20-acre portion of Greenwood’s land was sold in 1880 to Smith as part of a wider subdivision into small farm sections. By the early twentieth century, most of this area was in mānuka and grass. Use of the land for farming was relatively short-lived. In 1922, a subsequent owner J. R. Herring subdivided the holding, now sixteen acres in size, into 42 individual lots. By this time, the nearby village of Titirangi had become increasing popular as a recreational destination for Aucklanders. The new sections were advertised as being the settlement’s first subdivision and promoted for summer holiday and weekend use. ‘Beautiful Titirangi’ was touted for its ‘glorious views - mountain air - sea bathing’. Although several properties were sold over the ensuing decade, some sections were retained by the Herring family - including Lot 4, where Maurice Shadbolt House was subsequently built. Construction and initial use of Maurice Shadbolt House (1940s-1964) The Maurice Shadbolt House appears to have been erected as a small holiday home for J. R. Herring’s son, James Sinclair Herring and his wife Zena (née Morrell). James Herring was provided with Lot 4 in 1933, during the Great Depression, when he was just 20 years old. Occupying relatively steep land between View (later renamed Arapito) Road and the Manukau Harbour, the section may have been especially desirable for its position next to the subdivision’s only recreation reserve, as well as having access to a beach at its base. Other lots, including the adjoining section to the north, were transferred to additional family members. The house was built in the 1940s, when James Herring evidently worked in his father’s carrying business. Erected at the top of the property, it consisted of a modest timber structure of gabled, California Bungalow design. Internally, it contained a front living room and bedroom, and service areas at the rear including a kitchen. James and Zena likely used it as a recreational retreat, retaining a main residence in suburban Auckland. In 1948, the couple transferred the property to a close relative, Bruce Nicolson. A radiator repairer, Nicolson provided Arapito Road as his main address. Either Nicolson, or the next owners from 1954 - brother-in-law Edward William Herring and wife Dawn Herring (née Nicolson) - may have extended the building to incorporate additional rooms at the rear including an underlying basement. Edward Herring was another son of the original subdivider J. R. Herring, and similarly a carrier by trade. During his tenure, in 1960, a garage was erected beside the house, reflecting his profession as well as the importance of motorised transport in accessing Titirangi. By this time, the area’s scenic beauty was attracting an increasing population, including individuals who wished to pursue artistic endeavour or a stronger connection with the natural environment - or both. In 1964, the property was purchased as a ‘cliff-hanging home’ by published author, Maurice Shadbolt and his young family. From this time until shortly before his death forty years later, it was to form both Shadbolt’s main place of residence and where he wrote much of the work that made his name. Maurice Shadbolt One of this country’s best-known authors, Maurice Francis Richard Shadbolt (1932-2004) has been considered ‘a leading figure in the growth of a New Zealand literature during the second half of the twentieth century’. Also a political activist and ‘early Pākehā proponent of the need to recognise and embrace Māori culture in national life’, he became a significant contributor to debates about New Zealand history and identity at a time of widespread social change. During his lifetime, Shadbolt produced a large and varied corpus that included short stories, novels, biography and journalistic pieces - as well as a major play and other works - with a particular focus on New Zealand themes and topics. Through widespread overseas publication, he played a leading part in projecting this country and the wider Pacific to an international audience. Born into a working-class family during the Great Depression, Shadbolt experienced a peripatetic childhood in the North Island, partly due to his parents Frank and Violet’s attempts to find work. Both his father and maternal uncle Joseph Kearon - a significant mentor - were involved in Communist-influenced activities to assist the unemployed. Shadbolt’s other influences included forebears such as great-grandfather Ben Shadbolt, who milled timber at Akaroa following deportation from Britain via penal institutions at Norfolk Island and Port Arthur, Tasmania. For parts of his childhood, Maurice Shadbolt lived in Te Kūiti - a stronghold of the Kīngitanga movement - where encounters with Māori communities as well as provincial Pākehā culture and the wider environment also helped shape his outlook and writings. Shadbolt’s early literary interest was in short stories, the dominant form of post-war fiction in New Zealand. Entering Auckland University College in 1950, he became friends with other writers who were to become notable, such as Maurice Gee and Kevin Ireland. While working as a journalist in 1952-4 with the Taranaki Daily News and then the Waitakere Gazette, he married a fellow reporter Gillian (Gill) Heming. After travelling around the country for the National Film Unit and being mentored by poet James K. Baxter, he became focussed on writing stories about New Zealand and New Zealanders, reflecting a growing public interest in explorations of national experience and identity in the post-war era. In 1959, during a three-year sojourn in London (1957-60), Shadbolt published his first collection of short stories, The New Zealanders to overseas acclaim. Both he and Gill engaged in political activism, participating in an anti-nuclear march to Aldermaston and working to collect a 2000-strong petition protesting Māori being excluded from the All Black rugby tour to South Africa. After the couple returned to New Zealand in 1960, Shadbolt undertook work with the renowned photographer Brian Brake for National Geographic magazine, resulting in a 48-page article about New Zealand (1962), and a separate large-format publication New Zealand: Gift of the Sea (1963). The latter has been described as ‘a book that celebrated New Zealanders in a way never seen before’. Both reached mass audiences, increasing Shadbolt’s national and international profile. During this period, Shadbolt became the country’s first full-time professional author. Early recognition for his endeavours included the Landfall Prose Award (1957), Scholarship in Letters (1959), Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award and Burns Fellowship (both 1963). Versed in film direction and commercial journalism, he was also ‘the first New Zealand writer to effectively use the media to promote both his books and his persona as author’. His image included ‘a thick mop of black hair…currently fashionable spectacles above a thick black moustache…and…a pipe that was to become part of his apparatus until the end’. Shadbolt and Maurice Shadbolt House (1964-71) Acquisition of the Arapito Road property reflected aspects of Shadbolt’s identity and aspirations. With two young children Sean (born 1960) and Brendan (born 1962), he and Gill were looking for a more permanent home than they had previously occupied. In general, West Auckland was strongly working class. More particularly, Titirangi held associations with artistic endeavour, notably through the painter Colin McCahon, who had pioneered residing there as a way of experiencing life near a city that was close to nature and allowed freedom of expression. With imported-style housing nestling in regenerating native bush, both the Arapito Road property and wider Titirangi reflected Shadbolt’s view of living and belonging in more than one world: ‘the near and the far, the native and the exotic, the insular and the cosmopolitan’. The site’s setting, with its dramatic views over the Waikūmete estuary, perhaps also mirrored the strong visual qualities observed in his writings. Shadbolt himself later stated: ‘I was taken by green Titirangi: the houses sequestered among the trees. The bird-filled bushland and sunny harbour views. This was the New Zealand I dreamed about in smoggy London winters……the suburb’s sole land agent...took us down a road winding past the fern-fringed beaches and rocky inlets of the Manukau harbour’s tidal coastline. Then he halted outside a modest dwelling half-hidden in fern. Though the rooms were small, there were large views. The place didn’t feel cramped. There was a small basement I could use as a workplace…It was the boys’ [Sean and Brendan’s] endorsement which decided the issue. I also envisaged a productive life here, a place where I might stand or fall as a novelist’. The basement where Shadbolt began working looked out towards the estuary, as did his later studio. Upstairs rooms were for family use, initially including three bedrooms, with a small kitchen at the heart of the domestic layout. Shadbolt soon planted banana palms and other trees on the road bank and garden in front of the house, reinforcing its subtropical appeal. The property was, in part, purchased on proceeds from Gift of the Sea. Shadbolt’s tenure coincided with a general shift from writing short stories to longer fiction. News that his first novel Among the Cinders might find publication occurred when he and Gill first took possession. He soon began writing This Summer’s Dolphin (published 1969), and revising Strangers and Journeys, his major early novel (1972). Writings between 1964 and the late 1970s have also been characterised as shifting from an earlier phase of preoccupation with contemporary matters towards combining this with explorations of New Zealand’s past. In 1965, he wrote ‘This is what interests me - making sense of my time and place’. Writing short stories initially remained ongoing, including The Presence of Music (1967) whose triptych format was directly influenced by Colin McCahon. McCahon later (1969) painted a pre-existing bar in the basement in bright colours, with the title ‘Buttercup Fields Forever’, and also showed Shadbolt how to grow watercress. Reflecting earlier self-sufficient habits, Shadbolt routinely tended a vegetable garden on a terrace retained by a self-built concrete wall, and fished from the beach below the house. Political engagement included Anti-Vietnam War activism and criminal justice reform, part of his view that a writer’s role involved leadership on social matters. Early visitors to the house included cousin and fellow activist Tim Shadbolt, author and publisher Dennis McEldowney, and poet Louis Johnson. Marti Friedlander photographed Maurice Shadbolt among palms in the front garden. After twins Tui and Daniel were born (1965), a bedroom addition was erected over the pre-existing garage. Built in 1966, this was evidently designed by architect Nigel Cook - part of Shadbolt’s wider personal and artistic network, which also included sisters Marilyn Duckworth and Fleur Adcock, and others. The space was subsequently subdivided to accommodate a studio, but after Shadbolt reverted to the basement the latter became a fifth bedroom. The underlying garage housing the family’s Holden station wagon - in which Shadbolt travelled the country on journalistic and other assignments - was also partly subdivided for a rear storeroom. In the late 1960s, Shadbolt compiled The Shell Guide to New Zealand - the country’s first motoring guide, ‘which stimulated an increasingly motorised public to explore its own country’. He acquired greater historical knowledge during this project, including about the New Zealand Wars. Also extensively visiting the wider Pacific on international assignments, he considered that New Zealand was becoming a Pacific nation rather than a European outpost. Sympathising with Māori as disadvantaged members of society, he noted that ‘we have hardly begun, officially, to acknowledge that we have not just one but two living cultures’, developing an especially close affinity with Ngāti Porou carver Pineamine Taiapa, to whom he later felt in greatest debt as a novelist. After the breakup of his relationship with Gill, he had a child Brigid (born 1971) with second wife Barbara Magner, a television broadcaster who had participated in making a programme about Taiapa and was one of the first of her profession to address the viewing public in ‘a natural, non-BBC acculturated accent’. With an enlarged family to support, Shadbolt made plans to fulfill an early desire - creating a dedicated writing studio in the rear garden. Construction of writer’s studio and other alterations (1972-2004) In 1971-2, Shadbolt with sons Sean and Brendan hand-built a long, stepped concrete path down the property to the beach. This facilitated construction of a single-room, timber studio on a former lawn midway between the house and foreshore. Shadbolt had initially envisaged a separate writing space in the garden when the property was purchased. According to biographer Philip Temple, this new studio was to be ‘his ‘hideout’, a ‘sanctuary’ where he could construct a writing life within his personal ecology’. Its creation represented ‘the throwing out of a spiritual anchor’. The McCahon-painted bar was moved into the building, and its interior filled with other artwork, writings and mementoes. While the studio was under construction (1972), Shadbolt undertook a trip to Mururoa and Tahiti on the yacht Tamure to oppose French nuclear testing in the Pacific. As part of the first wave of flotilla protest, he participated in a seminal development that ultimately led to New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy in 1987. Another notable contributor was Martyn Finlay, a witness at Shadbolt and Magner’s wedding, and a frequent visitor to the house. As Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in a new Labour government, Finlay took out a case at the International Court of Justice (1973) which resulted in cessation of atmospheric testing at Mururoa in 1975. After returning, Shadbolt moved into the new ‘bush-bound’ studio with inspiring views towards the estuary. Contemporary alterations to the main house (1972-3) included expanding the rear bathroom and the former dining room as an extended lounge and terrace, with enlarged basement below. Extensions also included converting the earlier living room into a larger front dining area, and part-enclosing an earlier front terrace. Ranch-sliding doors provided greater connection with the exterior. Shadbolt later wrote movingly about reading a volume of James K. Baxter’s poetry in the living room during this period, shortly before Baxter’s untimely death. In 1973 a beloved family dog, Terry, was buried in the garden, near the studio. Social gatherings in the mid-1970s featured many notable literary and artistic names, variously encompassing writers Kevin Ireland, C. K. Stead, Fleur Adcock and Keith Sinclair; painters Don Binney, Jacqueline Fahey, Nigel Brown and Michael Smither; photographers Brian Brake and Marti Friedlander, and many others. In 1972 noted Samoan-born author Albert Wendt, New Zealand’s leading Pacific writer of fiction in English, stayed at the house ‘on the occasion of the publication of his first novel, Sons for the Return Home’. Other visitors included Barry Crump, the only better-known New Zealand author than Shadbolt at this time; and literary critic and lecturer in English at the University of Canterbury, Cherry Hankin, who became the first to introduce Shadbolt’s work into a university curriculum. The house formed a refuge for many writers and artists away from the demands of usual routines. Shadbolt’s published works at this time included novels A Touch of Clay and Danger Zone (both 1974), the latter loosely based on his Mururoa experiences. Shadbolt had a complex personal life, partly reflecting the socially experimental times. In 1978 he married third wife, actress Bridget Armstrong who had a varied career in Britain and elsewhere, having been directed on stage by Sir John Gielgud as well as appearing in television soap operas, costume dramas, and alternative comedy shows such as The Goodies and Ripping Yarns. The wedding took place in the front garden, with Brian Brake as photographer. Both Shadbolt and Armstrong participated in the country’s anti-Springbok tour protests (1981), being among a group of 200 that opposed the South African team’s arrival at Māngere Airport as well as joining much larger demonstrations at Hamilton Stadium and Eden Park, Auckland - the latter alongside Tim Shadbolt, who returned with them after the event to Arapito Road. Amstrong additionally played a major role in organising a 25,000-strong Artists Against Apartheid march and an outdoor concert in Aotea Square, a day before the Auckland match; and later became ‘both Auckland and New Zealand president of Actors Equity, leading strikes for better pay and conditions during the first year of the new [Labour] government’. The couple were also among 29 people arrested while protesting demolition of His Majesty’s Theatre in early 1988, a seminal event in attempts to stem the rapid loss of built heritage in central Auckland during liberalisation of the economy. Further changes to the property included expansion of the vegetable garden in 1981; refitting the basement as a self-contained flat for wider family use in 1988; and extending the rear part of the studio in the same year. In late 1989, Shadbolt briefly shared the studio with fourth wife and notable author in her own right, Elspeth Sandys, between spells when she used other writing spaces in the house. From the late 1970s until the end of his career, Shadbolt focussed more substantively on historical themes - producing many of his most notable works. These included The Lovelock Version (1980), considered probably the most outstanding of his novels; and a significant trilogy on the New Zealand Wars, namely Season of the Jew (1986), Monday’s Warriors (1990) and The House of Strife (1993). He also engaged with New Zealand’s experience at Gallipoli in 1915-16, now seen as a defining event in this country’s evolving history and identity. Consequent works included the acclaimed play Once on Chunuk Bair (1982) and a non-fiction collection, Voices of Gallipoli (1988), based around survivors’ narratives. He also published The Reader’s Digest Guide to New Zealand (1988, revised 1993), and the well-received first volume of an autobiography, One of Ben’s (1993). In 1989, Shadbolt became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to literature. He was subsequently recognised as ‘New Zealand’s foremost writer of historical fiction’. Kevin Ireland noted that he was ‘not just our best and most inventive historical storyteller…[but] one of our most determinedly ambitious writers…a kind of Hector Berlioz of the New Zealand novel’. Publication of a volume of critical essays devoted to Shadbolt’s works in 1995 was a significant event: until that date few New Zealand writers - perhaps only Frank Sargeson, Katherine Mansfield and Janet Frame - had received a similar accolade. Two years later, the University of Auckland awarded him an honorary doctorate. At this time, he considered that a major role of a New Zealand writer was ‘filling the spaces; ending the silences of our history’. In 1997, Shadbolt and Sandys attended the nearby Going West literary festival with other authors including Maurice Gee and Marilyn Duckworth. After the effective ending of his marriage with Sandys, he was assisted by his second wife Barbara Magner as the onset of dementia became increasingly apparent. In 1999, he sold the McCahon-painted bar in the studio to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Publication of his last major work, the autobiographical From the Edge of the Sky, occurred in the same year. In 2000, Shadbolt left the house permanently for a residential home in Taumaranui. As well as his CBE and honorary doctorate, while living at Arapito Road he had been awarded the New Zealand Book award for fiction (1981), the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book of the Year twice (1973, 1987) and the NZ Literary Fund’s Scholarship in Letters three times (1970, 1982, 1990). He had also been an Auckland University Literary Fellow (1987), Writer in Residence at Waikato University (1992) and Katherine Mansfield Fellow (1998). He was additionally the only author to receive the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award on three occasions, adding wins in 1967 and 1995 to that in 1960 . Maurice Shadbolt died in October 2004. He was brought back to the house to lie in state for two days before a funeral at St-Matthew-in-the-City in central Auckland. The latter event was attended by more than three hundred people, with eulogies by Kevin Ireland and others. He was buried at Waikūmete Cemetery, a relatively short distance from Titirangi, ‘with a view to the Waitakere Ranges’. Later history (2004 onwards) Immediately after Shadbolt’s death, Mayor of Waitakere City Bob Harvey recommended to Waitakere City Council that he pursue obtaining the property to preserve it as a residence for promising writers. A six-term mayor of Waitakere, Harvey had known Shadbolt personally for over 40 years. In 2006, Waitakere City Council purchased the property from Shadbolt’s family. A subsequent project to create a writer’s centre in association with Auckland University of Technology (AUT) was mooted but did not proceed. For several years after 2007, the house was rented out for residential use. In 2010, Waitakere City Council agreed in principle to transfer the property to Going West Trust for a writers’ residence. A registered charity, the Trust had emerged from the Going West Books and Writers’ Festival, begun in 1996 to promote literary arts in west Auckland and subsequently the longest-running literary festival in the country. A development group furthering the writer-in-residence project included Sean Shadbolt, Maurice Shadbolt’s publisher David Ling, and Naomi McCleary. Repairs and maintenance in 2012-13 included creating an enlarged northern deck. After Council amalgamation and with the active support of the Waitākere Ranges Local Board, Auckland Council confirmed leasing the property to the Trust in 2022. Subsequent conservation included replacement of 1988 basement linings and extensive stabilisation. This formed part of an ongoing programme undertaken in accordance with a 2013 conservation plan prepared by Burgess and Treep Architects. The work has been supported by a wide variety of public bodies and groups, with the aim of furthering the property’s association with literary endeavour into the future as a writers’-in-residence retreat. The place retains many of the aesthetic qualities that inspired Shadbolt, the Going West Trust noting that it remains in ‘an idyllic location…surrounded by native trees and overlooking the Manukau Harbour’.

Context Situated on the edge of the Waitākere Ranges, Titirangi forms an outer suburb on the western fringes of Auckland. Developing particularly from the early twentieth century as a recreational destination for Aucklanders to enjoy the natural environment, it is notable as a ‘bush suburb’ with large amounts of native vegetation. Much of the suburb remains relatively low density with single-unit housing on bush sections. Its current architecture has been characterised as eclectic, ‘reflective of Titirangi’s past as a holiday destination and its popularity with artistic people, who were open to developments in modern architecture and looking for freedom from conformity in a like-minded community’. It also sits in a wider ancestral and archaeological landscape, with names, associations and archaeological sites connecting the Titirangi area with peoples who occupied the land before European arrival and subsequent development. The Maurice Shadbolt House and Studio is situated on Arapito Road in South Titirangi. Recorded archaeological sites linked with Māori occupation in the vicinity include several midden along the South Titirangi coastline, and bank and ditch remnants at the southern end of the South Titirangi peninsula - a few hundred metres from the current property. Shadbolt himself was aware of this activity, referring to pā as well as ‘middens here and there, and rock paths meandering among mudbank and mangrove and along which canoes were portaged…’ in his writings about the locality. Other identified historic heritage places in southern parts of the suburb include a house on the peninsula at 12 Paturoa Road; and a brick bridge and other residences at the head of the Waikūmete or Little Muddy Bay inlet on Huia Road. More widely, formal recognition has encompassed several places linked with Titirangi’s twentieth-century artistic community. These include the former Brian Brake House on Scenic Drive (List No. 9649, Category 1 historic place) and the Colin McCahon residence in French Bay (List No. 5259, Category 2 historic place). Both Brake and McCahon had close connections with Shadbolt. Auckland Council has also identified the Donner House and Studio on Kohu Road. Further places reflecting Titirangi’s cultural and artistic associations include the Hotel Titirangi (Former), Te Uru Gallery and the Treasure House (Former) (List No. 9823, Category 1 historic place), which is linked with the area’s evolution as a recreational resort, growing appreciations of ‘New Zealandness’, and later identity as a cultural hub. Site The site consists of a rectangular area extending between Arapito Road and the Waikūmete or Little Muddy Bay foreshore. It includes part of the Arapito Road road reserve containing plantings and other elements encompassed in the functional curtilage of the property. Apart from a flat area occupied by the front lawn, the land slopes steeply towards the foreshore. Much of the site is covered with native bush. View from lower concrete path The site contains a main residence near the road and a studio approximately halfway down the section. A small front garden adjoining the road encompasses a lawn, a mature tī kōuka or cabbage tree and a grapefruit tree planted by Maurice Shadbolt. Plantings along the embanked road frontage include both cabbage trees and nīkau palms. A free-standing letter box survives at the top of a steep driveway to the house. A tall nīkau flanks the driveway to its north. To the south of the house is a stepped, concrete path, created in the early 1970s by Maurice Shadbolt and his sons Sean and Brendan. This extended through the entire property to the foreshore via the studio, although its very southern part was removed by a land slip prior to 2013. Narrow in width, the upper surface of this path is consistently scored with a criss-cross pattern. Steps in the lower surviving section are cambered. Other garden elements include Shadbolt’s self-built, concrete wall for retaining his vegetable garden, a short distance south of the house. A line of basalt stones on a similar NW-SE alignment further south again may be edging for a path or additional beds. Remnants of a small A-frame playhouse are believed to survive. The rear garden additionally contains trees, including large pōhutukawa existing before 2000, as well as recently regenerating bush. The main house incorporates a small residence of California Bungalow design that has been extended in several stages, especially to the rear (south) but also to the front and one side (west). It is predominantly of timber construction, with weatherboard wall cladding and a gabled, corrugated iron roof. Most of the main living spaces are at ground floor level, with a basement area at the rear and a once-detached garage to the west now beneath a 1960s extension. The residence remains largely as it was when last occupied by Maurice Shadbolt and his family, with the exception of subsequent basement alterations and minor modifications at ground floor level. The core of the house is broadly rectangular in plan. Classic California Bungalow features include a double gable at the front and an external chimney breast. The main entrance is set back from the front elevation, accessed via a long porch on the building’s west side. Mostly enclosed, the porch includes large windows to the exterior and a built-in bench. Ranch sliding doors provide alternative access between this space and the house interior. Maurice Shadbolt often sat in the open part of the porch outside these doors. The main entrance provides direct access to a small lobby and narrow kitchen. Unusually, the latter sits in the centre of the house, reflecting the building’s informal layout as well as its evident evolution through successive extension. The front rooms, consisting of a dining room and main bedroom, are reached from a doorway near the west end of the kitchen. The dining room, enlarged in the 1970s to include part of an earlier front porch or verandah, includes a fireplace with a rusticated brick surround. The main bedroom, like most spaces other than the kitchen, includes windows that provide direct visual connection with the surrounding bush. Built-in cupboards and other cabinetry at the south end of the room incorporate doorknobs of 1950s or 1960s design. The kitchen is lined with vertical boards and is lit by a skylight. An open alcove at the east end is similarly lined, suggesting initial use as another service room, although employed as a small bedroom when occupied in the 1960s by the Shadbolt family. A narrow, built-in feature - possibly an early broom cupboard - survives in its northwest corner, the interior of which bears remnants of successive paint schemes. The main lounge, accessed from the south side of the kitchen, offers extensive views across the surrounding bush towards the Waikūmete or Little Muddy Bay inlet. In the 1990s, Shadbolt considered this to be his favourite room. It incorporates built-in shelving that housed some of his books, and the slate base and surrounds for a wood-burning stove. A serving hatch in the north wall connects directly with the kitchen. A large alcove in the east wall incorporates a built-in bed and set of drawers. The latter space served as another children’s bedroom in the 1960s and has since been converted to a day room. Other spaces at ground floor level are accessed from the front lobby. These include a bathroom, and a 1966 bedroom extension built above a pre-existing garage. The extension retains evidence of having once been divided into two spaces, one briefly used as a studio by Shadbolt. The southward view is similar to that from the lounge. It retains an attached bookcase and built-in cabinetry. Beneath the main living areas and accessed externally, the basement is generally built of concrete blocks with internal plastering. Timber linings created during late 1980s conversion to a self-contained flat have been removed and stabilisation added. A storeroom with separate access to the exterior via a ledged door survives. Under the west extension, a previously detached, timber-built garage has a corrugated iron roof and weatherboard wall cladding, and sits on a flat pad retained by exposed basalt stonework. Its unlined interior retains a rail and other furniture for a sliding door, and nogging in the upper east wall with nail pegs for holding everyday items. Pencil graffiti on this wall’s internal face include references to 7’ 1½” and possibly 9’ 7¾”, which may relate to the insertion of a partition wall subdividing the rear of the garage into a small storage or work space. The latter is accessed from a separate door towards the south end of the east wall and has a window in its south elevation.   Studio The studio consists of a single-storey, timber structure of rectangular plan. It has a gabled, corrugated iron roof and weatherboard wall cladding. Internally, it is effectively of open-plan design with split-level spaces at the front and back connected by a wide aperture. Structurally, the building is unaltered from the period when it was used as Maurice Shadbolt’s main writing studio. The simple, weatherboarded structure is generally functional in appearance but contains some ornamental flourishes. These include a vertical-boarded skirt in the upper part of its south gable which terminates in a zig-zag, and a sturdy, rustic finial at the apex of the north gable. A small area of ornamental concretework incorporating seashells and water-worn stones similarly lies at the foot of steps leading towards the building entrance at the northeast corner. The earlier, front part of the building is raised from the ground with enclosed footings, which accommodate a small sub-floor for storage. The rear part, forming a later extension, contains open footings but is otherwise of similar design. The front (south) elevation incorporates the main entrance, which is recessed towards the west end, with a landing reached by a set of timber steps from the concrete path. The four-light door may be re-used from the front entrance of the 1960s main house. A large flanking window forms a significant feature, having directly provided impressive views of the Waikūmete (Little Muddy Bay) inlet from the studio interior. Access to the sub-floor area is via a low doorway near the east end of the elevation. Other windows survive mid-way along the west elevation and centrally in the north wall of the building. An external globe lamp survives on the west side of the building. The interior contains a main room at its south end, used as Shadbolt’s primary working space. This retains extensive original finishes as well as built-in furniture. The latter includes a writing table beneath the west window and several bookcases. Traces of where a bar painted by Colin McCahon - ‘Buttercup Fields Forever’ - was placed in 1972 survive. A subsidiary space in the extension at the north end of the building has a raised floor accessed via steps and a broad, T-shaped aperture from the first room. Lined with vertical boards, this area was briefly employed as a separate writing space by Shadbolt when Elspeth Sandys used the front portion of the studio in the late 1980s. Comparisons The Maurice Shadbolt House and Studio is the main place in Aotearoa New Zealand associated with Maurice Shadbolt and his literary activity. It is where he lived for much of his adulthood, engaged in family and other social life, and created the bulk of his written output including most of his most well-known works. In the 1990s, he reflected: ‘Much of my life, possibly too much, has been lived in a studio set above a serene New Zealand estuary. This hermit hideout, where I write now, is fringed with spindly mangroves, wreathed with rainforest, and always under siege from loudmouthed birds. My nearest dictionary defines an estuary as a breach in the land where local tides blend with global currents. That bears some similarity to my situation. With one foot in Oceania, the other in Europe, my life has been a miscellany of the near and the far, the native and the exotic, the insular and the cosmopolitan.’ During a peripatetic upbringing, he lived in a variety of other dwellings and also occupied numerous residences during early adulthood and later periods away from the property, including overseas. Nevertheless, ‘this cliff-hanging bivouac, all but buried in greenery, has been a sanctuary for more than thirty years…three hundred square feet where I dwell with my fancies and fantasies.’ Other places linked with writers of importance in twentieth-century New Zealand include the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace, Wellington (List No. 4428, Cat 1 historic place); Frank Sargeson House, Auckland (List No. 7540, Category 1 historic place); and Ngaio Marsh House, Christchurch (List No. 3673, Category 1 historic place). The latter includes a 1980 studio. Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage, Dunedin (List No. 9274, Category 1 historic place) was the last home of New Zealand’s first professional playwright and has an ongoing life as a writers’ residence. Rise Cottage and Garden, Dunedin (List No. 1921, Category 2 historic place) formed the residence of notable poet Ursula Bethell and companion Effie Pollen between 1924 and 1934. Bethell’s literary work reflects the beginnings of modern poetry in Aotearoa New Zealand. St Joseph's Church (Catholic), Jerusalem/Hiruharama (List No. 161, Category 1 historic place) has close connections with the later life of poet James K. Baxter, a significant early mentor to Maurice Shadbolt. The former Seacliff Asylum outside Dunedin (List No. 9050, Category 1 historic place) is similarly associated with important author Janet Frame. One of Frame’s residences, Willow Glen in Ōamaru (List No. 3252, Category 2 historic place), was demolished before the mid-1990s and has had its listing status removed. Several of Frame’s other places of residence survive, including her main childhood home in Eden Street, Ōamaru. Homes of people more broadly connected with the arts in twentieth-century Aotearoa New Zealand include the Rita Angus Cottage, Wellington (List No. 2291, Category 1 historic place) - known by Angus as Fernbank Studio. The studio of painter Bill Sutton forms part of Sutton House and Garden, Christchurch (List No. 9845, Category 1 historic place). Studio of Ralph Hotere (Former) in Port Chalmers has also been recognised (List No. 9762, Category 1 historic place). A residence owned and occupied by landscape and birdlife artist Don Binney survives as Binney House, Auckland (List No. 595, Category 2 historic place). With immediate connections to Maurice Shadbolt, the houses of painter Colin McCahon and photographer Brian Brake - the latter designed by noted architect Ron Sang - survive in Titirangi (respectively List Nos. 5259 and 9649).

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